


tell me what it’s like to burn

by QuickSilverFox3



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Firefighters, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Domestic, Fluff, Found Family, Gen, M/M, Minor/Implied Sam Chisolm/Jack Horne, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:35:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28266246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuickSilverFox3/pseuds/QuickSilverFox3
Summary: “You’re in a hurry,” Vasquez remarked, carefully drawing another card and inspecting it, catching sight of Billy’s frown out of the corner of his eye.“Remember your lovely new promotion that Chief Chisolm gave you the other week?”“How can I forget?” Vasquez grumbled, thumbing at the new reflective stripes on the suit hanging from his hip. “Nothing but trouble trying to work through that awful pile of paperwork left to drown me in.”
Relationships: Billy Rocks & Vasquez, Goodnight Robicheaux/Billy Rocks, Joshua Faraday/Vasquez, Red Harvest & Billy Rocks, Red Harvest & Jack Horne, Red Harvest/Teddy Q, Teddy Q & Goodnight Robicheaux
Comments: 8
Kudos: 20





	tell me what it’s like to burn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mysticalninjakoala](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysticalninjakoala/gifts).



> A Secret Santa gift for mysticalninjakoala!  
> Prompt: AU Firefighters !: Give your creativity free rein. I will enjoy embarrassing encounters in the barracks, double meaning jokes, distressing revelations of being in love, whatever you want!  
> [⁂ is used for a full break, ✱ is a break within the scene]

“Vasquez.”

Vasquez glanced up from his hand of cards—a trio of Jacks staring up at him from beneath his thumb and a mismatched pair lying next to them—as Billy barreled into the room. He still moved gracefully, purposeful in every step as he vaulted over the beat up sofa to fall into the empty chair next to him.

“You’re in a hurry,” Vasquez remarked, carefully drawing another card and inspecting it, catching sight of Billy’s frown out of the corner of his eye.

“Remember your lovely new promotion that Chief Chisolm gave you the other week?”

“How can I forget?” Vasquez grumbled, thumbing at the new reflective stripes on the suit hanging from his hip. “Nothing but trouble trying to work through that awful pile of paperwork left to drown me in.”

Billy nodded, propping his head on his laced hands, staring at Vasquez with a gleam in his eye that set the other man’s teeth on edge. “One of those pieces of paperwork was about some new transfers.”

“ _ Si. _ Your point?”

Red marched into the room, hands stained black with engine grease and a spanner carefully wrapped up in his long hair piled on top of his head.

“Billy made one of the new recruits trip over his own feet,” Red reported, brandishing a rude hand gesture at Billy before the other man could.

“Red scared one of them so much, he nearly fainted,” Billy retaliated. 

“ _ Dios ayúdame porque voy a pecar _ ,” Vasquez spat, scrambling to his feet and knocking his chair backwards—Billy catching it on one outstretched ankle—and he was out of the door. 

He caught himself on the bar at the curve of the top of the stairs leading down onto the main floor. It momentarily knocked the wind out of him, a gasp muffled as he bit down on his lower lip, but it gave him time to study the small group below him, thoughts tripping over themselves. 

There were three men, but Vasquez could see the man Red had scared instantly. His face was still as pale as moonlight, eyes large and wide as he stared around the bay, shifting from foot to foot as if weighing up the desire to run. He hadn’t though, despite how much he reminded Vasquez of a frightened rabbit.

“Which one for you, Billy?” Vasquez muttered, already seeing the answer to his question when he saw the older man of the remaining two, a blush lingering high on his cheeks. 

“He’s familiar,” Billy said, idly tapping his fingers against the rail and making the metal sing. Heads snapped up towards them, and Vasquez sighed, wishing more than anything for the cup of coffee he had to abandon in the breakroom. 

Red and Billy fell easily into place behind him as Vasquez moved down the stairs, studying the third man in careful glances. He was attractive, all tarnished gold and a certain swagger to his movement, tailor-made to Vasquez’s taste, but something about the way he stared up at Vasquez soured the stirrings of attraction in his stomach. 

“You the welcoming party, while we wait for the Captain?” he called up, crossing his arms across his chest in a way that emphasized his biceps. Vasquez was only human after all, so he looked—flipping Red off behind his back when the other man snickered. 

His boot hit the lower step before he fully realised what the other man had said. Vasquez’s promotion was new, new enough that Vasquez hesitated before picking up his new jacket, and this man didn’t know who he was talking to. 

He grinned, all teeth. “Names?”

“Teddy Q, sir!” 

“Goodnight Robicheaux.” He seemed to anticipate Vasquez’s raised eyebrow, countering it with a lazy shrug. “Call me Goody.”

“Faraday.” He winked at Vasquez, scanning him up and down openly, deliberately. “Joshua Faraday, but you can call me the world’s greatest lover.”

“Faraday.” Goodnight’s voice was flat, a clear warning that was immediately ignored in favour of Joshua’s grin only widening at Vasquez. 

“So where is the captain? I know management types generally have sticks up their arses but…” Faraday trailed off, expectantly. 

“Oh, really?” Vasquez purred, taking perverse delight in the look of barely masked confusion on Faraday’s face. “I’ve been accused of lots of things,  _ guero _ , but having a stick up my arse isn’t one of them.”

Faraday’s eyes darted to Goodnight, a silent question in the movement. 

The man took a moment to answer—his arm looped around Teddy’s shoulders to keep his balance as he fought back a fit of laughter. “Look at the stripes, Faraday. Thought you were meant to be a card shark.”

Faraday scowled at Goodnight, waving a creative hand gesture his way as Goodnight howled with laughter. Teddy looked torn between fleeing and joining in, held firmly in place by Goodnight’s grip regardless. 

Vasquez flicked both of his wrists, deliberately tugging down his sleeves to show the stripes of his rank. “Welcome to Rose Creek.”

⁂

Billy frowned into his medical bag, the tip of his tongue clamped between his teeth as he studied the contents far more intensely than it required. It had been a busy few weeks since the new recruits had arrived, including a handful of nuisance fires that only promised to increase as summer stretched out, golden and dry. 

“I can hear you thinking from over here,” Red piped up from the engine he was tinkering on, oil smeared across one cheek and across the stomach of his undershirt. 

“I still can’t remember where I know Goodnight from.” Billy picked up a roll of gauze, tossing it from hand to hand before adding in a packet of medication, starting to juggle them. 

“Have you tried, I don’t know, asking him?”

“Have you tried actually having a conversation with Teddy?” Billy fired back, shifting to the side so Red could see the raised eyebrow. 

Red waved a spanner at him, but returned back to his engine without pressing the issue further. 

“Did you serve with him?” 

“No. We were in completely different divisions.”

Red let the silence stretch out, hearing Billy sigh loudly. 

“It came up at the bar one night,” he said finally, tucking the items back into his medical bag. He could feel the heat rise on the back of his neck and tugged his hair free of the tie, letting it fall freely down his back with the front held back by a collection of pins—running his fingers through the indentation that the band left. 

“Between me  _ and _ Vasquez, it took three months to get that information out of you.”

Billy shrugged, not caring that Red couldn’t see him, head buried in the engine as it was. “What are you even doing?”

“It was making a funny noise.” Red wiped his hands on his shirt again, uncaring of the large black handprints that it left on the already stained shirt, and scrambled to his feet. “But we aren’t talking about me. You like this man?”

Billy rolled the question round and round in his mind, fingers twisting in the strap of his bag. He wanted a smoke, the burning desire for one—just to release the line of tension down his spine, the knot of worry in his gut—beating beneath his skin like a heart. 

“I don’t dislike spending time with him.”

Red leant against the van, letting out a low whistle. “Funny how the universe works, isn’t it?”

Billy opened his mouth, unsure if he was going to curse at the younger man, or tease him about his own crush on Teddy—the frequent glances and turning towards him that would go almost unnoticed from almost anyone else, but Billy could see it—but a crash from the other side of the large engine room cut off any other thoughts. He was on his feet and moving across the room, his bag slung over one shoulder, with Red hot on his heels. 

“I’m fine,” Goodnight said the moment he saw them, raising his free hand to try and placate them. Teddy scoffed, jaw clenched and his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed frantically, but he remained in place, the bandana pressed to the fresh wound on Goodnight’s hand already bled through. 

“This is what your ‘fine’ looks like, Goody?” Billy dropped to his knees next to Goodnight, the other man’s eyes blown wide at the sight, and carefully took over from Teddy, peeling the bandana away. 

“Teddy hit his head when I fell?” Goodnight tried, every muscle tense and twitching, jaw clenched as he fought the reflexive urge to flinch away from Billy. 

“I’m fine,” Teddy waved his hands frantically, “It’s a slight bump, I’m fine.”

“Red.” 

Red snapped to attention, the motion completed before he even realised what he was doing. 

“Take Teddy. Get him cleaned up and some new clothes on,” Billy continued as Teddy flushed, the pink highlighting the freckles covering his cheeks. Teddy glanced down at his blood covered clothes, fidgeting with the edges of his sleeve cuffs and staining his fingers a deeper red. 

“I don’t have any extra stuff here,” Teddy began, but Billy cut him off with a look before turning to grin at Red—his heart dropping, he knew that look, he knew this was penance for teasing Billy about Goodnight earlier.

“Red has some spares. You can borrow his.”

✱

Red was going to murder Billy, slowly and painfully.

But the other man knew that, had the nerve to wink at him as Red steered Teddy out of the small storage room—a quick, barely there gesture, one of the ones they all were fluent in due to coming from big families. 

Teddy was silent next to him, but Red didn’t have a doubt that he would follow. It was strange, at odds to what Red had expected of the other man when he had first met him—all wide eyes and trembling hands that tugged at some urge deep in Red’s chest. It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling. Even so, being around Teddy set him on edge, but he couldn’t stay away. 

“How are you feeling? Truthfully.” Red slowed abruptly, Teddy stumbling into the empty space at his side—rather than following quietly behind him, warmth radiating from his skin like a beacon. 

Red watched the emotions flicker across Teddy’s face like a wildfire—shifting from one to another before he was able to fully make out any one, beautiful even as the hair on the back of his neck rose—before they were wiped away. 

“My head does hurt,” he said, lightly pressing his fingers against a spot on his head, “And I’m starved.”

Red wasn’t a medic, not in the way Billy was. He maintained the engines to his exacting standards, just as he had been taught to do. But he was moving before he could think his actions through fully, drawn by a want he couldn’t name. 

Teddy’s skin was almost blistering, Red’s palm rasping against the fair growth on his cheek as he cupped Teddy’s jaw, holding him still. The other man’s eyes were dark, the same colour as coffee, pupils blown wide. Red’s fingers pressed through Teddy’s hair, circling the developing bump as gently as he could, feeling the other man flinch slightly in his hold.

“In my professional opinion, I think you’ll recover.” He grinned, a lightning quick gesture, and Teddy’s cheek bloomed into a blush as he grinned back. “C’mon. Clean clothes, then lunch before the bell goes off again. My treat.”

Teddy nodded, following next to Red silently, his stubborn blush filling Red’s chest with pride.

He liked the thought of Teddy in his clothes more than he thought he would—sleeves hanging past his wrists and falling back down whenever he moved, fabric loose across his shoulders but stopping high above his hips. Teddy ran nervous fingers through his hair, catching Red’s eye in the mirror and smiling softly at him and—

Oh.

_ Oh. _

Red smiled back, realization settling warm across his shoulders. “Come on then. Before all hell breaks loose again.”

He slung an arm around Teddy’s waist, twisting his fingers to hook onto the edge of the pocket—the other barely letting out a squeak of protest before Red was pulling him along—and his heart lodged into his throat as Teddy sighed, leaning against him, letting him lead the way.

✱

“I’m not sure if you’re being cruel, cher, or just clever.” 

Billy glanced up at Goodnight—not failing to notice how his breath caught in his throat, eyes widening a fraction, that had nothing to do with Billy carefully cleaning his wound with the distilled water in his bag. “Can’t I be both?”

Goodnight threw his head back as he laughed, revealing two golden teeth in his amusement. It was a good laugh, Billy mused, rich and deep even as it seemed that the noise was surprising to the other man. 

“You’re just one big surprise,” Goodnight chuckled, wiping away a few stray tears of mirth with his free hand. 

Billy ducked his head—a stubborn section of his hair swinging free from the mess of pins he used—and curled his fingers around Goodnight’s, running his thumb across the rough skin on his palm, above the cut, for longer than strictly necessary. He looked up to judge Goodnight’s reaction to see his pupils blown wide, black almost blotting out the blue. 

It was familiar. The angle was different, just enough that Billy couldn’t place the memory, slipping through his fingers as he tried to grab it. 

“I hope I’m a good surprise.”

Goodnight’s eyes grew impossibly wider at his words, Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed reflexively. “You’re far better than a man like me deserves.”

“None of that.” Billy was forced to look away once more, plucking the gauze from his bag and beginning to wrap Goodnight’s hand, feeling his pulse radiate through his fingers. “I will decide what I deserve.”

“Apologies.” Goodnight’s fingers twitched in Billy’s grip, the knuckles of his other hand turning white from the force of his grip, feet sliding on the floor. “My daddy always said that misery must stop at some point as there isn’t a wind that is always storming.”

Billy chuckled. “Bend your fingers for me.”

Goodnight complied—fingertips brushing across Billy’s hand for longer than was strictly necessary—and Billy began to slightly readjust the gauze. “I know you from somewhere before this. I know you recognised me when you first saw me.”

“You are unforgettable,” Goodnight agreed, “But I’m guessing you can’t remember me?”

Billy mouth twisted, old embarrassment burning in his gut. He had been on the other side of this interaction too many times to not have old, unwanted memories resurface like rotting corpses. He shook his head, unable to trust his voice. 

“I take no offense from it, cher. You were rather busy at the time.”

Billy watched Goodnight shift from beneath lowered eyelashes. There was a dull ache resonating through his knees, the promise of bruises cemented with every second that passed, a pervasive chill working through his uniform trousers. 

“It was at a bar in Texas, maybe five years ago?”

The memory was faded, masked by the rage Billy carried with him, now tempered but not forgotten, and alcohol. He’d been recently discharged then, adrift and directionless. 

“These ‘good ol’ boys’,” Goodnight’s was bitter, mouth twisting as he spat out the words, “were giving you shit. So there was a fight, and they deserved the ass-beating you dispensed. But, ah, during the heat of the moment, I guess—”

“I punched you in the face.”

“You punched me in the face.” Goodnight grinned, leaning enough to catch Billy’s eye. “It was a good hit, cher, but I fear I’ve done more damage to myself now than you did back then.”

The gauze was rough beneath Billy’s fingers as he tied off the final section. Taking hold of Goodnight's hand, he raised it to his lips, kissing the boundary between fabric and skin once. There was the faint scent of plastic clinging to the gauze, a sterile scent that always reminded Billy of hospitals and all the horror that lurked within, but beneath that was the scent of sandalwood from Goodnight’s body wash, the faint pervasive undertones of tobacco. 

“Now it will heal,” he said, meeting Goodnight’s gaze, a thrill low in his gut at the look of reverence on Goodnight’s face. 

“That a standing offer, cher? Or can I kiss you properly without injuring myself first?”

Billy set his hands on Goodnight’s knees, using the other man to push himself back to his feet, leaving them nose to nose. “I think that could be arranged.”

Goodnight’s beard scratched against Billy’s lips as he kissed Goodnight, gentle and soft at first, but the other man groan—the noise almost sounding punched out of him, and Billy had to bite back laughter—and wind his uninjured hand into Billy’s hair, pulling him impossibly closer. 

⁂

“You’re late.”

Goodnight paused, hand raised to knock on the door which had sprung open before he could, revealing a scowling Red. “You didn’t say a time.”

“You’re still late. We’re on borrowed time before our shift starts.” Red stepped back, beckoning them both forward. Goodnight turned to Billy, the other man idly locking the car over his shoulder, taking hold of Goodnight’s hand with his free hand. 

“How’s your dad handling your new boyfriend, Red?” Billy asked, voice deliberately light, the gentle tone at odds to the grin that threatened to split his face in two. 

Red waved a rude hand gesture at Billy. “Dad! Billy and his new boyfriend are here.”

“Little bastard,” Billy hissed.

“Payback,” Red responded. 

Goodnight bit back laughter. The pair of them reminded him of his sisters—bickering with each other with such regularity that it had frightened him when he was younger, but there was no heat in their words, only gentle affection. His attention was swiftly diverted by the man emerging from the kitchen. 

He was broad, powerfully built, but his face was kind, folding into a delighted smile when he laid eyes upon them both. 

“No way!” Faraday’s voice echoed like an excited child’s, having taken the stairs two at a time behind them. “Your dad is  _ the _ Jack Horne, Red?”

“Now none of that,” Jack said, dusting off his flour covered hands on his apron, cheeks pink. “You’re Red’s squad, so that makes you family.”

Faraday nodded numbly, only managing to lean into Vasquez’s embrace as the man slipped next to him, a kiss quickly planted on his cheek. His eyes seemed to be glittering with stars at meeting a man from legend. 

“I think the Chief might have some competition,” Billy murmured, just loud enough for Vasquez to hear, Red’s ears pricking up as well. 

“Where is Sam anyway?” Vasquez asked Jack, only barely managing to keep a straight face as the man stared back at him, deadpan. 

“Sam’s manning the grill,” Jack said slowly, knowing Vasquez was getting at something from past experience—and the steady glare Red was levelling the Captain’s way was only adding to that suspicion.

“And you are baking? What a lovely team you make.”

“Outside.” Red’s voice brooked no arguments, so Vasquez inclined his head towards Horne—knowing when to pick his battles was half the reason he got the promotion after all—and moved toward the backyard, tugging a starstruck Faraday behind him.

“It’s lovely to meet you,” Goodnight called as Billy steered him away, nodding at Red as they passed. “Hi Teddy!”

Their voices became muffled as the door swung shut behind them—the rise and fall of Emma’s voice making itself known as they all became introduced—and Red groaned, pressing his hands into his eyes, feeling the beginnings of a headache creep up on him. 

“Hey.” Jack gently tugged him backwards, letting Red hug him tightly. It was the same way since Red had been a child, scared and alone, when he had first arrived at Jack’s house, a foster placement at first. “I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Red sighed, breathing in the scent of fresh baked bread and woodsmoke that clung to Jack’s skin. “It means a lot.”


End file.
